Now Never Sleeps

Now we live in an interconnected, always on world, leaving behind detailed digital footprints across devices, apps and websites. Every time we buy, apply or interact with a brand or our friends, data is collected and stored. We consume millions of messages in countless places every day.

This explosion of data and platforms can make for a network that is daunting to unpick when faced with developing marketing strategy and tactics.

From the biggest ideas to the smallest elements of a smooth multi-channel execution that delivers seamlessly at every touchpoint, knitting it all together requires a host of specialist skills, all working in harmony with each other.

Each specialism in itself can be a complex technical or mathematical task, that requires detailed understanding of new technologies or an innate connection with a particular market or group. And with every step marketers take to get closer to their goals, the universe expands once more.

This is why we’ve built the company we have, in the way we have. We think it’s important that the route to collaboration is not just free or encouraged but created, nurtured and rewarded. It’s easy to get wrapped up in your own expertise but much more powerful when combined with others.

Our company is designed on this principle and our Lab the embodiment of it. Our recent acquisitions of Bloom in Leeds and Digital Massive in Sydney, Australia are in service of it. Culturally, we’re programmed to share expertise and ideas. We think this is the future for brands and agencies. Those that don’t embrace it risk being left out in the cold.

That’s why we put data science at the heart of everything we do; it informs creative, creates infrastructure, predicts behaviour and measures results.

For example, when Sky Sports was celebrating its 23rd anniversary of the Premier League, we made sure they were at the heart of the conversation, using social intelligence tool Whisper. We analysed over 80 million data points around the Premier League conversation online, giving us unprecedented access to the minds and emotions of football fans. This enabled to generate unique insight that fed into a data centric creative concept. First we were able to identify the football star who would resonate the most across fanbases: Thierry Henry. Then we identified which moments of the Premier League were the most iconic, including some that were more obscure but had a place in fans’ hearts. This intelligence was behind the ad that also became the most successful viral video of 2015 and ensured Sky Sports became a talking point among fans.

When Pandora wanted to know how its online marketing spend affected offline footfall, we launched a UK-first project with Google to track the impact paid search activity had on in-store sales. Through the innovative use of GPS and beacon data, Pandora’s marketing team now has a better understanding of its customer journey and the role of search and digital marketing in the total media mix.

For an online and offline retailer, we used our big data platform Almanac to track consumer behaviour across channels and predict when individual customers would lapse, catching them just at the right moment to reactivate them.

Our examples are endless; we’ve rebranded a whole city with Hull City of Culture 2017, we can create impressive uplifts in PPC campaigns by using machine learning in real time to influence keyword buying based on factors such as current SEO performance, stock levels or competitor bidding; we use social channels in new ways and are often first to market, such as when we used Instagram for a 7UP campaign or Snapchat for Pepsi Cherry.

Over 15 years ago, we built the UK’s first internet bank’s CRM infrastructure, described by Forrester as “world-class” and over 25 years ago we were, and still are, behind the UK’s first telephone bank. Recently, we made personal loans more personal in a creative email campaign that achieved a phenomenal open rate and conversion rate 4 times higher than usual, resulting in first direct’s strongest week of loan sales on record.

Creativity and data science at the heart of marketing is in our heritage.

And now we are taking this message across the world to Australia. With over 650 specialists in all of today’s key disciplines, we’re helping global clients turn messy and complex into a vital force that unlocks the power of their brand. Because now never sleeps.